Ultima III - Exodus - Emulation Crashing (Altirra 4.10)

[+wavemotion]

So I've been trying to get Ultima III to work under Altirra (3.90 and 4.10 tried) with no success. 

 

I've tried several different sets of ATR disks from normally reliable sources - including one keyboard hacked version posted here at AtariAge that was specifically tested by the hack-er on Altirra so I suppose at least that one should work.

 

It always fails the same way:  I can create a party of 4 characters but when I go to 'Journey' to start the game, it crashes with an illegal instruction and gives me choices to try to improve the compatibility of the emulation.

 

 

I've tried the following:

 

o Using stock Atari OSA and then OSB BIOS

o Using Altirra 800 and Altirra XL BIOS

o Enabling and Disabling BASIC - both Altirra and Atari BASIC (the game won't even load with BASIC enabled so I suspect it must be disabled)

o Trying different RAM combinations form 48K compatibility all the way up to 1088K

o Trying more accurate (slower) Disk Emulation

o Trying PAL vs NTSC

 

I'm out of ideas...  thoughts of any kind?  Must be something dumb I'm doing.  The Demo screen plays fine and character creation is fine... it writes the characters to disk properly. But it won't ever start the game without a crash.

 

I've also tried the same sets of disks in my Atari 800 emulator for the DS and it crashes at the same spot.

 

Ultima I and II seems to work fine. 

[Mclaneinc]

Have you tried making sure it can write to the disk (under file / disk dives, set it to R/W if it's on VR/W)

 

It's very unlikely that it's Altirra directly (not 100% impossible, though), almost certainly it's config issue. I'll have a play in a bit and see what it does..

 

Edit: Just tried it from an ATX for the side 1 and an atr for the scenario disk, and it ran fine without any mods from a standard XL config.. Created a character and journeyed onward...all fine

 

This was on 4.10 beta 2 https://www.virtualdub.org/beta/Altirra-4.20-test2.zip There's been no big emulation fixes since the first beta, so which version should not affect it...

Edited February 6, 2023 by Mclaneinc

[+wavemotion]

Ok... that helps. None of the 4 sets of disks I found had any .ATX disks - they were all .ATR

[Mclaneinc]

Just incase...

Ultima III - Exodus (Side A).atx Ultima III - Exodus (Side B).atr

[Wrathchild]

Perhaps also give the cartridge version a try? (Curtesy of @Shawn Jefferson) 

 

Ultima_III_Atarimax.car

[+wavemotion]

Thanks guys - the ATX worked great. Maybe I got a hold of some bad ATRs. Wouldn't be the first time  

 

Didn't realize it got converted to cartridge... wonder if that one will save game states (to disk or other NV memory?).

[Mclaneinc]

I'd imagine IF the cart saves, that it's to disk. (unless he converted the save routine as well)

 

Glad it's working..

[Wrathchild]

It saves to the flash memory on the cartridge and so this is emulated under Altirra (File/Save Firmware/Save Cartridge...)

[Heaven/TQA]

Now I want to flash my AtariMax… Ultima 4 available, too?

[Wrathchild]

Sure

Ultima_IV_Atarimax.car